Lightning Review: Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Synopsis
Neal Page (Steve Martin) is trying to get to his family in Chicago after being on a business trip in New York. After Del Griffith (John Candy), a traveling salesman, inadvertently makes Neal miss his cab, they pair up to get home. But the trip is more than either of them bargained for.

Review
I have heard a lot of good about Planes, Trains and Automobiles, so I was happy to finally see it playing on TV. Road trip movies are great because they focus on a few central characters, but allow for other characters to pop in and out along the way. Martin and Candy are fantastic together; there are few comedians from the 80s that can play well off each other like they did here. The humor is genuinely funny and never degrades to vulgar comments or actions like many comedies nowadays. It is fun to see how their characters react to the each other and the different situations the pair runs into during their trek to Chicago. The title says what the movie is going to do. Every mode of transportation imaginable is used by Page and Griffith at some point: airplanes, trains, cars, bus, even an ice cream truck. Planes, Trains and Automobiles may not have created the road trip sub-genre, but it definitely defined them, and is one of the best.